


Don't Let Your Memes Be Dreams

by Ariamaki



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Depression, Implied Sexual Content, Intersex, Memes, Other, Platonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2015-11-23
Packaged: 2018-04-30 03:13:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5148170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ariamaki/pseuds/Ariamaki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Few have had the bravery to wonder what would happen if the two most depressed monsters of the Underground got together, split their differences, found their common ground, and joined forces... Over a shared love of grotesquely, powerfully stupid memes. And yet here we are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. It Begins

# DAY ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY SIX SINCE REUNION (S.R.)

**  
**

\- - - - - - - -

There were always consequences to every action. Frisk knew that better than anybody else, these days. Even without their Determination shenanigans leading to years of additional ( _and conflicting_ ) memories, they had to grow up fast just to do what they had done, to **SAVE** everyone. Speaking of everyone, and consequences... Right now, all throughout the Underground, monsters were preparing and moving and leaving in bits and fits... But it would take a lot of time. Even with the Barrier open, even with the humans on the surface being as accepting as they were ( _and what a relief that was_ ), things take time to occur, even for cheaters. Not, that is, to say that Frisk was still **SAVE** ing or **LOAD** ing. No need now: Everything had worked out. But the process was taking a while, and so Frisk was taking a walk. In a lot of ways the Underground was more home than anywhere on the Surface had been, and they'd still be visiting often: To completely abandon this entire civilization would be silly. It would just become an outpost, a historical site, maybe a museum of some sort. Maybe Toriel could be convinced to build her new school at the foot of the mountain, instead of all the way out in the nearest city. And then everybody, Papyrus and Undyne and Asgore and Mettaton and Sans and Alphys...

Oof. Right. Sans and Alphys. Today was the big meeting, right? Every monster in the Underground had to do a bit of a... Thing. Paperwork, family history, work history, and so on. They'd need IDs and birth certificates and other mostly-human contrivances, nowadays, and Alphys had gotten the short straw of doing all the legwork. And today was one of the last ones: Sans, who even Frisk knew too little about for how much they cared about each other. Well, they wished Alphys luck: Trying to get information out of that little skeleton man was like getting water out of a rock... Which Frisk had also done, but that was another story entirely.

\- - - - - - - -

Alphys sighed as she dropped another pencil beside her clipboard and looked down at the huge sheaf of charts and papers. At this rate, these exit interviews were going to take longer than the entire process of trying to open the Barrier in the first place. And of course, as the Royal Scientist, she got to do all of them... Despite not being that kind of scientist. Then again, she really doubted that the Underground had any psychiatric care specialists, or she wouldn't... be her, honestly. To top off the entire dumb thing, right now she was trying to plow through the paperwork for the most enigmatic person on her list.  
"Um. Well."

Sans, the seemingly omnipresent ( _how_ ) and more or less total enigma ( _HOW_ ) of a fairly pudgy ( ** _HOW!?_** ) skeleton in the blue jacket sat across from her, eyesockets barely lit from within. He'd been answering questions about his time in the Underground, his life... And more specifically, his interactions with Frisk, Asgore, the Barrier, and everything else that had become so important recently. The only thing unspecific here had been all of his answers.  
"so, hey, how much longer will we be working on this? i think i have a job or six to get to. and then immediately go on break at."

Of course, this waffling had gone for the better part of an hour now, and if one of them didn't do something, anything, and soon, it'd probably go that way forever. So she grit her teeth, drew on some bit of the backbone Undyne had been trying to instill in her, and opened her big dumb mouth.  
"Sans, I know this whole thing can be pretty dull, but-"

One of his eyes flared brighter for a split-second.  
"dull? oh, you want **dull**? because if that's the case, i could start being honest. you'd be asking me to dull it back, then."

Her face scrunched.  
"...Um. Was that a 'dial' pun?"

"not my best. i'm very tired."

She took a moment to rub the bridge of her nose, sighing and pushing back her spines: one of many habits picked up from watching too much 'human history'.  
"You and me both, brother. I just... Wait, honest? Sans, h-have... Have you been **lying**?"

"pretty much inveterately since the day i first learned how"

"...You're about to say that wa-"

" _it hasn't happened yet_ so no, i wasn't lying. i just... omitted things. i'll _omitted_ "

"You'll 'admit it', yes, I... _I see what you did there_."

The lights of the lab buzzed and flickered for a moment as the two of them stared across the table at one another. Somewhere in the distance Mettaton broke... something, probably, a wall? Hard to say, the sound was very muffled and Sans' skull was blocking her monitor. Sweet Angel above she really just wanted to read some MMKC doujin on that sweet 80" screen and go to bed. When Alphys finally started paying attention again, Sans was looking at her with more... focus.  
"do you... not think my jokes are funny?"

Oh dust. Alphys, come on, you can figure out the right reply to this. Because you seriously don't, but you appreciate them in some way, and they're... humorous? No, he'd just make a bone joke and the cycle would start again. There has to be some smooth, normal person social response that would work here. Um... UH... friends... make fun of each other sometimes? Like, their flaws? Right? OK, try that. Worst comes to worst you die in your lab, alone, which... Wouldn't be the first time you thought about it this week.  
"I really don't... and I don't think Toriel does either."

He scoffed, or at least it sounded like it.  
"oh, is that so? because despite undyne literally being a fish, i have no clue how she stands the smell in here."

There was a hard glint in his eyes, and she realized she was smiling, despite the rage in her gut and the heat in her face.

  
"Are we, uh... are we going to do this?"

"the idea of you accomplishing anything is about as insane as the idea of me putting effort into anything, so... sure. it's on."

 

And that's when the slams started in earnest.

She leaned forward and poked the outline of a ketchup bottle in his jacket.  
"I have never in my life seen anyone but a garbage can go through condiments so fast."

He gestures over to a wastebin full of tin wrappers she had been sure she hid earlier.  
"for a total shut-in with no social skills you sure go through _condoms_ real fast."

Sputtering for breath and blushing even harder, she pointed at one of his many grease stains.  
"You spend more time in Grillby's than the _employees_."

Sans leaned back and looked up at the lights, casually smirking (she assumed).  
"you spend more time in this lab than the _experiments_."

"Your girlfriend only laughs at your jokes to be _polite_."

"if you watch anymore weird cartoons in that chair it's going to smell like _your_ girlfriend."

"Hey, you already made a fish joke about Undyne! And... me."

"yeah, and you already said tori doesn't like my sense of humor. so we're even."

"Mh... mulligan?"

"uh, yeah? on three."

 

They both count off silently, and for some reason she actually feels great. It slips her mind entirely that she hadn't stuttered or hesitated once in that whole exchange.

"Your brother is so obsessed with you I'd make a yaoi incest joke if the very thought didn't fill me with bile."

"at least **i** have a family and a job i can actually perform."

She blinked back a sudden tear and tried not to dwell on it.  
"At least **I've** ever made a single thing of lasting value in this world!"

Sans shifted slightly and looked away. Was he... frowning?  
"...ok, fewer low blows maybe."

The anger in her gut wasn't going away, but she could feel the sincerity in his voice.  
"Yeah, bridge too far. Um... What can we do that isn't going to... go there again?"

"...straight up personal insults? just blow off steam?"

" _God_ it's like you can read my mind. On three?"

They both paused again...

 

"indecisive philandering bi-ass poly-ass lizard."

"Incompetent lazy-friggin' wife-stealing sack of bones!"

Not all of what either of them had said was strictly true ( _or strictly insulting, by either of their standards_ ), but if her studies had been any indication, it was the kind of softball opener you used in these situations. Alphys could tell Sans was smiling, and she probably was too...

"big talk from somebody who still beats it to kids' shows"

OK, maybe she wasn't smiling anymore. But at least she had a rebuttal for that one!  
"You know I've had a camera in front of the RUINS door for like, ten years, right? You probably ' _knock knock_ 'ed one out twice a week for most of those years."

"...good counter. one sec... if asgore had a cult they'd worship his cock less than you do."

"Yeah? I bet you've spent more time clutching Toriel's knees than Frisk did, and they're like four feet tall."

"...so are you. hell, so am i. also, don't bring the kid into it."

"Right. Dust, sorry, got on a roll. OK, give me a minute..."

"no wait, let's change tack. even heard of... braggadocio?"

The urge to roll her eyes was overpowering.  
"I. Live. With. METTATON."

"fair enough, dumb question. so then: boasting battle. ready?"

"Are we the two least suited people in the entire Underground for this?"

Sans shrugged, a smooth motion for somebody with no muscles.  
"i dunno. i mean, maybe? but that's not what i asked."

"...Ready."

 

"i once made tori cum so hard you could hear asgore's tears from the ruins."

She managed a reply through her blush, even as the heat in her gut moved lower.  
"I once made Undyne cum so hard she destroyed her own house, again."

For the briefest of seconds, one of Sans' pupils flashed a disconcerting blue-and-green.  
"i could dust you so hard they wouldn't even know you didn't die of starvation."

Not to be outdone, Alphys thought back to his frankly paradoxical medical data.  
"I'm the weakest monster I've ever met and I could _still_ kill you with one bullet."

"odds are around one hundred percent that i know how the core works better than you do."

"Yeah? Odds are about the same that I've seen porn of my boyfriend 'bone'ing your girl."

"they're exes, that totally doesn't count."

"Wait, really?"

"i... hm. never actually bothered keeping score before."

She shrugged and slapped a claw onto the table, trying to change the subject. What was her strong suit... Her eyes drifted back over to the trash can, and the lightbulb went off.  
"Final round! _Self deprecation_ , no holds barred."

Sans blinked once, twice, and then 'closed' his eyes entirely. When he spoke again there were no pupils in his eyes at all, and a strange gravel-filled rattle backed his tone.  
" **alphys, you have started something you are not prepared for.** "

That put her hackles up and sent a chill / thrill through her spines, but Alphys stood her ground.  
" _You have literally just described my entire life._ "

At this point, the clipboard lay forgotten somewhere and they were both standing, face to face a few feet apart. Her heart was pounding, sweat beading around her eyes, and even Sans looked a bit... happier, than he had earlier? She couldn't read him well. But at least his pupils were back.

"ready..."

"Steady..."

"go."  
"GO!"

 

"my brother could be about a hundred times cooler if i did anything other than enable his social malfunctions and shelter him from the world."

"I've got two lovers, a set of genitals for each of them, and I'm still so sexually incapable that I need machines to do my work for me."

"speaking of machines, i could literally undo this entire conversation and jump to another timeline, but the very thought of setting foot inside that thing again makes me want to tear my own vertebrae out."

"There's at least twenty different suicide notes in this lab arranged just in case I forget to actually write one tailored to when I finally do it: Hell, I wasted an entire week coding the system that'd automate which one it prints out!"

"you want suicide stories? i watched the last royal scientist throw himself into the core and get split into an infinite number of imaginary points in space-time, a foot in front of my face. when i close my eyes i can't see anything else."

"I literally zombified all of your coworkers' parents and melted them into a single glob so broken it can't even vocalize anymore."

"i watched frisk murder you, papyrus, that zombie, and everyone else enough times that i've lost track. i wake up every morning wondering if i'm going to be sent back to zero, and every time? i still never do anything to stop them."

"It's pretty hilarious that I managed to complete a Determination extractor considering I've got no spine of my own! And before you ask that was _not_ an invitation for a bone pun."

"if i ever told tori the truth about even half of my life she'd throw me on my ass so hard my coccyx would break before my heart did. and _that's_ not an invitation to ask how a skeleton has a heart."

"I get messages from Gaster on the lab computers and delete them out of of instinctual fear."

"in half those timelines i mentioned, it turns out i pushed Gaster into the core myself."

 

They both pause and let everything sink in.

"I... Wait, you remember him too?"

"...you said you get messages from him?"

Of course, those end up being said simultaneously to the point neither of them can be understood. And then so does the next line. They talk over each other so effectively that it's a solid thirty seconds before either of them can actually shut up, and when they do there's a very long, very solemn pause. Eventually...

"I want to die, more or less constantly."

"me too. fair warning: it's not all it's cracked up to be."

The next pause is a lot shorter.

"...Wanna brew up some labware booze and watch dumb things from the Surface's Internet?"

"yeah, actually. lemme go get some takeout from grillby's. back in five"

She immediately rushed over to start selecting some choice bookmarks off her browser and DVDs off her shelves, while Sans flickered out of reality in the corner of her eye. A part of her brain was already working overtime trying to figure out how he did it, but the rest was just... calm.

\- - - - - - - -

A few miles away, in Waterfall, Frisk paused in their daily walk and shivered. It felt, for a brief moment, like the urgent desire to **RESET** which came after a _**bad time**_. And when those urges had come in the past, Frisk had not ignored a single one. They'd never gone to the very end, never seen their darkest unbidden thoughts through to completion... And that's what those little alarm bells in their head usually signified. This one? Didn't. So they paid it no mind and kept walking: After all, everybody's alive and free. What's the worst that could happen?

\- - - - - - - -

 


	2. It Continues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drawing ever closer to the chewy, memey center of things, the squad makes progress in a couple of ways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Related art pieces](http://chipchopclipclop.tumblr.com/post/131744141656/creepyknees-i-think-some-post-pacifist-sanses)   
>  [Related comics and voice acting](http://wtpyrofreak.tumblr.com/post/132637981726/m1nktank-asked-if-the-meme-squad-could-be-a)
> 
> Due to the ridiculous overblown way that CSS in general, and Ao3 in specific, handles font changes, certain jokes in this chapter do not work. My apologies, and please be aware that Sans' shirt is literally supposed to be displaying in Comic Sans MS, as opposed to being the same font as the surrounding text. On another fun note about formatting, every single time I edited this fic's formatting, it added 2 paragraph breaks to this author's note. It nearly got posted with about eighty-five blank lines. **:V**

\- - - - - - - - 

Alphys threw herself backwards onto the couch with gleeful abandon, not even caring how she landed on her tail for a change. One of her flannel-lined ( _Hotland or not, this lab was temperature controlled and she wasn't literally cold-blooded, so..._ ) sleeping labcoats fluttered in the breeze of the momentum: A last-minute change of plans, and all the others being busy tonight, had turned this into some kind of pajama party.  
"Booze~!"

Sans looked up from the table, adjusting a pair of bad plastic sunglasses and tugging slightly at the collar of his **_'bad ( jokes) to the bone'_** t-shirt... Something about the font made her feel like it was home-printed. Instead of opting for any kind of pants or shorts, he apparently just got the shirt five ( _yes, five, she counted_ ) sizes too big, so it went pretty much straight to his ankles and the armholes were like other, smaller shirts.  
"check, i guess... you said you had it covered. entertainment?"

She looked over the array of website tabs, YouTube videos, old Underground internet sublinks, and what she figured would be the finisher: a DVD copy of _The Room_ that she bought on the Surface. It had been one of her only non-anime purchases that day, and there was _pride_ in that decision.  
"For given values, check. Food?"

Her companion hefted an extra-large paper _**Grillby's**_ bag, probably filled almost entirely with burgers and fries, and swathed in an insulating layer of ketchup packets... She could only tell about the packets because the grease hadn't soaked the bag yet.  
"equally given values: check. two lazy sacks of failure in pajamas?"

"Super-ultra-check. So with that... Let's get this train wreck a'rolling!"

For whatever reason, Sans actually had a reaction to that: A groan and the flinging of himself onto the couch.  
"ugh. trains. can't stand 'em."

A bit of her earlier fire flares back up, and Alphys leans across the couch with what she hopes is a suggestive glance, but probably just has too much teeth and general... her-face.  
"Had one too many run on ya, huh?"

"no. we _had_ trains once. here in the underground. i guess... fifty, ninety timelines ago? they replaced the rivers and the ferry. and... they sucked. too slow to even get run over by, unless you were real lazy about it."

She still didn't quite have a full grasp of what this entire 'timeline' business was about, but she knew the gist from her research and her 'research' alike... In a matter of minutes, her opinion of Sans had shot up immensely, as had her curiosity. And it wasn't likely that he'd bring up suicide-by-slowass-train unless he had tried it, so she had to ask...  
"...Were you?"

"was i what?"

"Real lazy about it."

He shrugged again, the motion growing familiar with each repetition.  
"eh. didn't seem like an efficient use of my time."

"And this _does_?"

"yup. i get to make fun of people, learn things, make a new friend, get back into the science mindset without... issues... plus, i've got a real big urge to see what surface culture is like. i've barely gone topside ten, fifteen times so far."

She rolled her eyes, not at Sans' comment, but at her own decision-making.  
"Whereas I've been up there _twice_ , once with everybody and once with Undyne. I'll... work on that. Um. And as far as culture goes..."

"oh, don't sweat that. the best culture to learn about is always the dumb bits. never look where people expect you to, rule number one of a magician."

Alphys' claw hovered over a YouTube video's play button, confusion clear in her face.  
"Magician. I... OK, you'll have to explain that one."

"eh, you work enough jobs enough times, you start branching out just to try it all. plus, you can work some bad comedy into the act and everybody expects it to be bad. that's a... _bone-us_."

Her reply was instinct, from some kind of lizard brain... Wait. All her replies were from a lizard brain. That human idiom made **double** lack-of-sense for her! Oh well: _She said a dumb_. There. Much better.  
"Not on the first date."

Rather than storming out like she feared, Sans just chuckled and settled deeper into the couch. She would have sighed with relief, but her breath was still caught way too high in her throat. Stupid stupid just... Eugh, how she lived with herself was incredible... Then again, if their little jabs earlier had been any indication, Sans completely understood what that was like. Which was... a comforting fact. Comforting enough, anyways, that she finally managed to hit 'play' on the video.

Sans looked up towards the huge monitor and started unwrapping a burger.  
"so what's first?"

  
_♪(bwaaaahhhh)♪_   
[ **YOUR GRAMMAR SUCKS** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DS_zQw61PQE&list=PLA6687CF25DE17420&index=57)   
**AN UNTOLD NUMBERS OF VIDEOS LATER...**  


At one point, the couch had morphed into a completely unrecognizable pile of cushions, bones, and scaly legs. Somewhere underneath it all the two of them were laughing so hard the entire assemblage covering them fell apart, scattering loose fries here and there. The auto-dimming lights of the lab slowly came back up as Alphys wiped away a tear and tried to stand. That upward motion was halted when Sans gestured towards her as if urging her near, or asking for help.

"w..."

"Sans?"

"w..."

"Is something wrong?"

_"what-a-fucke?"_

And then she was down again, tripping over her own feet as laughter pealed out across the room. Sans caught her with some wisp of magic and redirected her fall towards the nearest cushion, but it still took them both several minutes to recover, wheezing and shaking. Through some unspoken agreement, they ended up repairing the couch, piece by piece, as they made their way back to some level of lucid conversation.

"that was a real trip."

"First of many, I'm hoping... I mean, they can't all be winners."

"eh, winners are overrated. give me a good fun loser any day."

Given the invitation, Alphys wanted to really just dig deep. Find something so heinously stupid that it wasn't even a joke. She loved that kind of thing, but... So rarely did anyone else. If she did that, what would happen? Would Sans not care? Would he not _laugh_? Would he walk out, disgusted with her ridiculousness? Sure, he said he liked dumb things, but, still: There was such a thing as going too far! No, stick to something safer. Maybe cute animal videos or something else mindless...

Sans interrupted her train of thought a moment later.  
"actually, what was up with those animated bits? totally different tone."

Salvation in the form of a skeleton. Don't question it, just be thankful.  
"Oh, you mean the copypasta?"

"...don't tell my brother they're called that. we'd have an emergency situation."

"Pffthehe... Oh. Oh no, you're serious. Would he really-"

"yup. no question. i mean, it's not like it's literally called spaghetti, but... pap kinda jumps on things like that."

"Fair enough. But yeah, those are... Want me to pull some up? There's a lot of them out there, some sad, some scary, some funny, some real stupid..."

"stupid please, with a side of attempted scary."

And so she dug, although it took a while to dredge out the self-referential meme-based ones, anything involving spaghetti or skeletons, and anything legitimately horrific. Alphys was so used to filtering herself and her interests around Undyne that this took all of a minute: "A while" only in perspective, given that Sans seemed surprised she was able to find that many that quickly to begin with.

Alphys cracked her knuckles and enlarged the text across the main monitor's screen.  
"Alright, let's start with a classic."

_**'So ur with ur honey and yur making out wen the phone rigns...'**_

**SEVERAL THOUSAND TYPOS...**  
**AND A FEW DRAMATIC READINGS...**  
**LATER**  


Alphys couldn't even keep herself from laughing as they blearily watched the last few credits of a dramatic reading of 'The Navy Seal Schpiel' go by.  
"W-w-when your mom come home, and make the spaghettiihehehehe..."

His reply was joined with a series of hand-signals she vaguely recognized, presumably standing in for all the ridiculous symbols in the original.  
"th **at's** s _ome_ g ood shit **good s Hit**"

She could tell he tried to raise his voice somehow, and so there was only one fitting reply: Alphys pitched her own tone down below even Sans' normal quiet speech.  
"no! small letter, small voice. small baby bird. thank u."

Sans ignored that 'advice' immediately, eyes bright as he put some rumble into his voice.  
"listen here _**cum-slut**_ , i bet you five million-"

Alphys immediately backpedalled when he called her that, blushing furiously.  
"OK no wait stop it got too real. _Too real_."

Sans went quiet and gave her a moment as she stilled her beating heart. That had been... hot. A bit too hot. God, not even _Undyne_ had called her anything that bad yet... Did Undyne and Asgore even know she liked being... talked to like that? Well, she could let them know next time. Make a night of it.  
"Mmmrhf. Wow, OK, that... Welp. Forgot that was a thing I was into. Sorry."

Now he was looking at her with a different expression... Curiosity, maybe?  
"eh, no need to apologize. wait. you thought that was hot?"

"Yeah, I, um, well, sort of... why are you looking at me like that?"

"just to be clear, as a friend. is that kind of messing-with-you allowed? because we made a lot of jokes, but not... _those_ jokes."

Alphys paused at that and tried to think. Her head was still a little hazy, but there probably wasn't any consequence to a wrong answer here.  
"Sure?"

"k."

She braced herself, but then nothing came. Sans was just... standing there.  
"...Well?"

"oh, i can wait. it's better when you don't expect it."

"Did I just punch myself a one-way ticket to some sort of **special** hell?"

His eyes flickered again as he shrugged, voice level and smile wide as ever.  
"probably. i mean, not any more than you already did. but probably."

Her response was interrupted by a comically, almost catastrophically loud buzzing. She whipped around to realize it was just the still... Oh. The still. What a mess that was.

Eighty feet of goddamn tubing, twenty-odd brackets, a few misshapen beakers here and there, a starting base that probably would have been toxic to humans ( _she had started researching that sort of thing a little more, just in case_ ), dozens of flavoring compounds, enough flame and charged plasma to require the entire thing be cordoned off... And the receiving container, which, for cultural reasons, was wrapped in a brown paper bag. The rig had provided a constant background hum ( _and occasional crackle_ ) to their video watching thus far, and now it lay silent.

"I think the... drinks are done. The intoxicating ones, I mean. Um. Hard ones. UM."

Thankfully, Sans pulled her out of the verbal sinkhole before the sludge could get past her mouth ( _um_ ), metaphorically speaking.  
"al-co- _hawl_! and man am i glad to see it. i love typographical humor as much as the next font, but if i see one more grammatical mistake tonight, the drinking will be mandatory."

"Yeah. It gets... Well, that was just one block of programming, to uh, borrow a term from Mettaton. I have _non_ -typo related entertainment, I swear. Although that would be about my speed, huh? Just show you the same things all night, no variation..."

Sans went to reply but quickly started laughing over his own words.  
"don't be too hard on yoursehaha no couldn't keep a straight face. god, can you imagine _me_ telling somebody else not to be hard on themselves? hypocrates himself would come down from on high to smack my dumb skull."

"...Do you mean Hippoc... No, you literally mean like, a philosopher who invented the concept of being a hypocrite. I got it. That was a _long_ walk."

The skeleton put on his best 'not causing any trouble' voice, which... was barely different from his normal voice.  
"not as long as the walk between me and the booze. pour me a glass?"

"I am... fairly sure you can teleport."

"can I?"

Alphys blinked, looking around for one of Mettaton's cameras ( _distinguished from hers by the tacky **CANDID SECRET TELEVISION CAMERA - LIVE** signage_ ), assuming this had to be a put-on or a set-up.  
"Aren't, uh, well... I the wrong person to ask?"

"are you?"

Her response could only be described as an audible **:|** , her lips sealing shut with a glare.  
"Nooo... Wait. You tell actual jokes, even if they're bad ones. So this isn't just some kind of dumb attempt at confusing me. Am I the wrong person... You're asking me if it's really teleportation. Because you know I'm not sure: I've only seen it a few times, after all. And... wait, are _you_ even sure it's teleportation?"

"if i were i wouldn't be asking, doc."

The solid thud of her heart after hearing him say that gave her pause.  
"Please, Sans. Don't... don't call me doc. I'm no doctor. I'm not even technically the royal scientist anymore. And I certainly don't save lives. I barely even do any science."

She was sure the skeleton tried to roll his eyes, but it just ended up looking like a particularly half-assed shrug.  
"the happy-go-lucky ghostbot with his own fandom would disagree, probably on both counts. so'd snowy's mom, and the dog family, and-"

"I... OK. Sure, my mistakes and my selfish whims turn out to help people sometimes. But-"

"no buts. you get results. which is more than i can say."

"Ah ah ah! If you get to shut me down with counterexamples, I get to do it back. And let's be clear: Frisk and Papyrus and Toriel and everybody at Grillby's would say you get _plenty_ of results."

"...what would gaster say?"

Her own turn to shrug. Sure, it was surprising for him to bring up what she had thought, for so long, was just another one of her paranoid delusions... The same topic that, after she started finding more details, had become one of her most closely vested secret worries. In the end, he seemed to know more about it than her by miles, so she went with the flow.  
"The mistakes don't undo the good, right? We'd both be a lot closer to 0 if they did."

The skeleton snickered, and still resolutely refused to get up and get his drink.  
"zeroes before heroes."

"Ugch, more like _booze_ it before I _**lose**_ it. Let's just start drinking."

"wow, you made a pun before i had the chance. ballsy."

Alphys ignored the potential jab about her genitalia and began pouring the drinks. They were... sticky. Hotter than she had hoped, that meant they were probably still reacting... The colors were irrelevant, she hoped, because what she saw was most certainly not any natural shade of purple, and the mint green stripes, while cute, should not remain visibly distinct in a _flowing liquid_. As for smell, it reminded her of long nights with Undyne and Asgore in all the wrong ways... To be less polite, it smelled like dry fish and wet fur.

"Well, here you go! One totally legitimate and definitely safe biochemical... substance. Heh. heh."

"looks real appetizing there a."

"Does it? Because I am afraid. Like, more than usual."

They both stopped at that, looking at their glasses rather than daring to face each other. Her awkward manners had murdered another conversation in cold blood, leaving its parents and participles to mourn over the senseless death of such a young collection of words.

"Sans, listen-"  
"look, alphys-"

Neither of them paused, each stumbling through the others' sentences just as badly as their own.

"i've kept that whole gaster thing secret for... more timelines than there ever should have _been_."  
"I had no clue somebody was suffering the same way I was, in the same places to boot..."  
"my life has been one constantly-accelerating lie to every person i love, and it's not slowing down even after everything got better."  
"I was at the end of my rope with the whole amalgamate situation alone, and the longer I spun there the more it looked like a real inviting noose."

Sans went quiet at that, looking at her differently, but she didn't stop.  
"Listen, Sans, seriously... You don't have to stay out of obligation, or laugh for my sake. We had a really... good... time, the talks, the videos. And... that fight, it was fun too. **But** , we said a lot of things. True things. A-and, we can't take them back, and they won't stop being true. But I won't force you to remember them and pity me all at once. I'll keep your secret, if that's what is bothering you. So... You don't have to drink. And you don't have to stay."

 _And I get to be abandoned again_ , she didn't add. Her face was hot, her tongue fat and uncomfortable in her mouth, the damn drink in her hand even warmer than either... So she was caught completely off guard when Sans slugged back the entire mess in one smooth gulp, his mouth... Maybe it opened, maybe it didn't. But a second later he was looking at her eye to eye, one socket blinking closed in a gesture of... something?

"cmon al, re _g_ r _et_ yourself together. we've got a( _lco_ )whole lot of drinking to do."

"...Oh my sweet dusty gods your jokes get _worse_ when you drink. HOW. **_HOW_**!?"

It was futile to ask, in the end. As Alphys already knew, some things even science couldn't explain. So she choked back her own drink (it could use more bitters, or maybe she could use less tongue) and prepared for an even longer night than she had assumed.

\- - - - - - - -

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by (and inspired, to some small extent), the following art, courtesy M1nktank, and voice acting, courtesy assorted VAs (credited in links):  
> <http://m1nktank.tumblr.com/post/131923354795/wtpyrofreak-m1nktank-thank-you-for-letting>  
> <http://m1nktank.tumblr.com/post/131888551625/can-the-meme-squad-be-a-thing>  
> <http://m1nktank.tumblr.com/post/132272133848/undyne-is-a-true-hero>  
>   
> Huh, forgot to originally post this as multi-chapter. Let's fix that!


End file.
